


A Date in New Rutberry

by Cards_Slash



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Humor, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Not Actually Alpha/Omega
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 11:02:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19083709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: Tony's not sure how it happened, that he ended up stalking a man he had never met.  He didn't understand how it started but he kept showing in New Rutberry once a month, like clockwork, to stare at the beautiful specimen of a man.That is, until the man actually took notice of him.  Sure he still wants to jump the guy, but it's more embarrassing now.





	A Date in New Rutberry

#  STEVE 

Steve liked to think that he lived an uncomplicated life. It was an observation he’d made as a skin-and-bones fifteen-year-old breaching the edge of the forest line for his first solo adventure in the greater world. Outside of the hushed quiet of the trees, the world _exploded_ into complications. 

Roads, for instance, were among his least favorite of human inventions. Roads guaranteed cars, cars guaranteed noise and smells and trash flung out of partially rolled down windows. Roads interrupted the natural landscape, they cut into the earth and rendered it hard and cracked and difficult to navigate. Roads meant an excess of people, and people meant an excess of fresh complications.

Steve wasn’t a fan of convenience stores, or grocery stores, or hardware stores, or clothes stores, or _any_ stores. There was a mind-boggling, brain crushing, stupidity to the _idea_ of exchanging slips of paper for goods that for all his years of trying, Steve simply couldn’t understand. People stood in lines to give up paper and coins with invented value to other people who stored it in plastic and metal boxes until _different_ people collected the paper and coins to deliver it to _other_ people who kept in metal vaults (so he heard) until yet a different set of _other_ people redistributed a portion of it back to the people who collected it.

Steve just didn’t understand why the people who collected the money to start with didn’t get to keep it if they were doing all the work of collecting it. (There was a hierarchy, Bucky had told him, with wisdom and exhaustion and no patience at explaining it yet again. People observed a hierarchy and they understood their place in it, and they obeyed the rules of that place.) 

Steve didn’t like stores. He didn’t like meat aisles. He didn’t like canned goods. He didn’t like freezer sections with meatloaf lollipops in paper boxes. 

Steve didn’t understand a park. He didn’t understand why parks had to exist, why people had cut down all the trees from every place they good except for parks. They went to parks, to sit with the trees, to enjoy _nature_ when there wasn’t much natural about how perfectly landscaped and maintained parks were. People liked nature in friendly doses, exactly how they thought nature _should_ look.

Steve wasn’t a fan of complications when there was a perfectly easy way to live. He kept to himself, in the deepest part of the forest you could reach in less than two hours, and when he had to (and _only_ when he had to) he made the trip from his perfectly uncomplicated, comfortable, preferable den to the town at the edge of the forest. 

Some (like Natasha) liked to tell him that he never _had_ to leave the forest. Like the humans in their infinite lines, exchanging nonsense paper for precut meat and frozen breakfast sandwiches, he had gotten caught in a repeating desire. Steve had never intended to wander into an art museum. He had certainly never meant to find himself sitting on the benches and staring at the paintings hung on the wall. He’d never wanted to find himself caught up in the undefinable beauty of _art_.

But here he was, a full grown wolf, a man who had been predestined (so he was told, by anyone who cared to seek him out to tell him anything) to become the strongest alpha the pack had produced in six generations, pulling on a pair of dusty khakis at the edge of a lazy road. Here he was, with his zipper pouch full of people paper, on his way to mind-numbing transaction of trading his people paper for art supplies. Here he was, reliving the last conversation he had with the man who was determined to be called his predecessor, the one that was _adamant_ that Steve should take over the running of the pack.

Steve should take over mating duties.

Soon.

Steve should start immediately mating with the fertile females that had no better mates, the sooner they produced the alpha to follow him, the sooner the pack could rest easy. Steve needed to fuck as many fertile and willing females as he possibly could. 

It took it’s toll on a man’s back.

It was a workload that needed to be shared.

The pack couldn’t possibly expect one old man to handle it all by himself. And Steve (so said the alpha whose growing desperation to be celibate had become a constant guilt trip Steve had to suffer through) should be grateful to be given the honor. Mating season was coming soon, and there would be so many, many, many, many women that were hoping for offspring and they all hoped to catch the eye of the alpha. Steve could be the alpha with wandering eyes. He could do it for the good of the pack.

Steve didn’t want to mate with a dozen and a half ready-and-willing lady wolves, he wanted to get new charcoal pens and more paper and maybe watercolors this time. Steve wanted to buy canvas and oil paint and see if he could make the sort of art that ended up on museum walls.

That was why he was _here_ , and not _there_ being told how strong and virile he was (yet again).

#  TONY 

Truth was, Tony didn’t know when the fuck it started. No amount of studying his calendars gave him any indication of the exact moment he had lost his mind. He knew the date (the exact date) that he’d walked into the New Rutberry Art and Adventure Depot. He’d purchased an assortment of paint, pencils, paper and canvas that seemed like it would be a suitable gift for a six year old. 

(It hadn’t been. Apparently, oil paint could be toxic and therefore not recommended.) 

Tony hadn’t been too concerned with anything at that moment except getting back on the road that took him back to civilization. He had been caught up in feeling peevish, and petty, and not at all happy to have been dragged away from the beauty of a real city because one of Pepper’s friends had decided to retreat to the simplicity of a small town. (He hadn’t been excited to have Pepper look at him with both hands around a clipboard, lips flat, and voice delivering the ultimatum that he _owed her one_. He had owed her one, but he would have preferred the one he owed her to not involve a six year old’s birthday party in the a town called _New Rutberry_.)

The _new_ portion is what got him. The _new_ implied there was an old Rutberry. That meant more than one group of people had gotten together and decided _Rutberry_ was the name of a place they wanted to live.

It didn’t matter that he’d been in the art store on September sixth. It mattered that it was December second right this _moment_ and that New Rutberry Art and Adventure Depot didn’t appear to understand the concept of heating. There was snow outside that looked deep enough to hide a car in and the operator of the depot was sitting behind the counter, idly flipping through a magazine, wearing a jacket that they hadn’t bothered to zip, acting as if the biting cold wasn’t a bother. 

Tony was standing in front of a selection of stencils, wondering who drove two hours from the next largest down to find a stencil of a flamingo with a baseball cap on. He wondered exactly why one would need a baseball-hat-wearing flamingo. There didn’t seem like there’d be a practical application for it.

(Maybe that’s what he should have gotten for that snotty six year old. A flamingo with a baseball cap. Stencils probably weren’t toxic.)

Despite his impressive, expensive, enviable collection of fine art, Tony wasn’t well known for having an appreciation or inclination toward art. He had no business being in an art supply store, he had no business being in New Rutberry, but here he was.

Here he was.

Standing in the same fucking art supply store, wearing a nice suit, with a fresh haircut, fidgeting with his phone and ignoring the texts from his rightfully concerned friends. (He didn’t have family or they would have been texting him too. Tony, we’re worried. Tony, where are you? Tony you disappeared last week too. Tony, this is getting weird. Tony, this is officially not okay. Tony, what are you doing? Where are you doing it?)

Tony was standing in New Rutberry Art and Adventure Depot, with his back to the oil paints and his face turned toward the door, waiting for Steve. Steve was six foot-something. Steve was as broad as a barn door (as the saying went. Tony didn’t know much about a barn door and therefore couldn’t confirm the truth of the statement). Steve wore thin cotton button downs in forty degree weather and a pair of tennis shoes that looked like they’d been new in the nineteen eighties. 

Steve had no idea that Tony was waiting for him.

That was the first problem that Tony was experiencing. (The second, related entirely to the first, was that Tony couldn’t exactly explain why he was here. He couldn’t explain when he’d seen Steve, or if he had ever seen Steve the first time he came into this stupid store. He couldn’t swear that he’d made a mental note that he wanted to start stalking the man. It was just that October fifth rolled around and Tony found himself standing outside the store, staring at the door, trying to figure out exactly how he’d gotten there.

The amnesia was only half the trouble.

The second was how his body was bristling up with anticipation. It was how he knew the door was going to open just before the ancient bell gave a hearty attempt at jingling. Steve stepped inside, shedding fresh snowfall like it was a minor inconvenience. He was wearing a long-sleeve T-shirt stretched over every considerable muscle of his back, arms and chest. He didn’t smile, he didn’t greet the operator behind the counter.

He didn’t seem to notice how Tony made a noise like a man being strangled. Every part of his body was _aching_ to stroll up to the nice man he’d taken up stalking, and to just throw itself at him. Steve looked like the sort of man that would catch you if you launched yourself bodily in his direction. Tony could tolerate being caught by him.

Maybe he could just take all his clothes off first.

(And this was the third problem, how he was too fucking old to be getting a hard on in public, but there he stood, right in front of flamingo stencils, getting so suddenly hard that it took his breath away.) 

Steve, who Tony hadn’t managed to stop staring at, stopped short in between the display of adult coloring books and the oil lanterns to draw in a breath. It expanded his chest like a water balloon being filled with water, and when he was finished, he turned his head to stare over the displays and right _at_ Tony. His eyebrows were knitted up in confusion (but not offense). Steve had never looked at him before, he had never seemed to notice there were other people around him at all, but he was looking now. He was _staring_ like he didn’t understand what he was seeing.

It wasn’t the worst-case scenario. Tony’s entire body was perfectly pleased to be looked at. It was just his lingering sanity that couldn’t quite cope with being looked at by the man he’d been stalking for going on three months now. He didn’t say so much as a single word, just turned away from the stare and jogged out of the store.

#  STEVE 

Then.

The sudden interruption of his soundless, boring mission in the form of a well-dressed human looking (and smelling) conspicuously out of place in a dingy art supply store. He had a fresh-earth smell, a little bit like wet fur, and sweat and _sex_. It was a confusion of odors not commonly found in this people place. Steve might not even have caught the smell of it, but he’d had to hold his breath to pass the dumpster and he was mortal too, so he had to breathe eventually.

(As much as he loved the art supply store, he could hardly stomach the smell of the carpet in it. The mold and dirt and piss soaked into it was an atrocious soup that could have knocked a full grown wolf out if exposed too long.)

The man’s smell lingered after his rapid departure. It had been brushed up against the shelves, left hanging off displays, filling up pockets of space in the store. It was new, and fresh, and old, and very old all at once. Steve was staring at the door where the man had rushed out, trying to determine _how_ it had happened.

“I thought you two were just going to keep ignoring one another,” the old person behind the counter said. He (or she, or neither perhaps) flipped the page in the magazine as if the whole happening wasn’t even worth looking up for. The fact that the old person had spoken was enough of a miracle when he (or she) hadn’t managed to say a word to him for the past two years.

(Bucky gave him calendars in a vain hope that he’d use them to remember _seasons_. He’d almost cried when Steve started using them to remember _seasonal sales_ instead. But art was expensive.)

“He’s been here before.” It wasn’t a question. It was only a fact.

“He comes back every month. Right about the time of the full moon. That’s peculiar.” But the old person did not care. He was also stating facts. 

Steve breathed in again, and the smell was riper, more promising, more lingering. It was _screaming_ for attention, the very sort of screaming that all the mates in the territory were going to start screaming. (Fuck me. Fuck me!) It was just, perhaps for the first time, Steve was terribly curious about what would happen if he listened, and answered.

It wasn’t difficult to follow the man’s smell, it was as strong as gutted fish, marking a easily followed path out of the store and along the sidewalk to a little flat road-square where the humans left their cars to cool while they went about the business of shopping. The human was sitting in his car, body hunched forward, pressing his forehead against the steering wheel while his hands gripped it so tightly one might have thought he was attempting to drive without moving. His smell hadn’t changed at all, it was still as ripe, and aroused, and inviting as it had been inside.

It was _new_. Steve hadn’t ever smelled a _new_ wolf before. It wasn’t forbidden in the territory but it wasn’t socially acceptable either. _New_ wolves were people before they were wolves, and that meant they were full of people thoughts, and that made them noisy and obnoxious. Nobody invited new wolves on moonlit runs, or shared fresh kills with new wolves, or even asked a new wolf over to their den for fun stories and sex. 

What was more perplexing than the newness of the man was the uniqueness of his smell. Steve had met with ambassadors of every pack that bordered the tribe, even the ones that lived in the dirty cities and pretend to be people. But none of those smells were lingering on this man. He was a _new_ wolf without a pack, a new and _lone_ wolf. He had no idea what was experiencing, but instinct had brought him here.

Steve knocked on the closed window and the new wolf screamed in the car and flopped backward into the seat. Both of his hands were clutching his chest, and then he focused his eyes on Steve and--

Nothing.

The new wolf sat perfectly still, and he did nothing.

#  TONY 

Tony wasn’t a coward but he wasn’t sort of man who, when caught stalking another man in public, was going to just roll down his window for said man. No matter how close he was, or how conveniently near the window his crotch was. Not quite perfectly placed but certainly close enough that it seemed to emit a certain pleasing smell like an embossed invitation on fancy paper.

Tony might have rolled down the window if offers were being made, if buttons and zippers were being unfastened. He wasn’t going to roll down the window for a man standing there with perfect posture and his head cocked sideways in puzzlement.

So he sat in the front seat of his car, shaking his head no while the man on the outside of his car pointed downward repeated to indicate he wanted the window out of their way. No, Tony was fine with being found out, but he was somewhat less okay with being followed and being asked to converse when his dick hadn’t gotten the message that mortification should have cancelled arousal.

(Of course, his upstairs brain wasn’t doing a very convincing job of being mortified when it kept supplying an endless supply of real-time sex dreams about the man whose body had never been this close before. It was right there, his imagination was whispering, right _there_ , close enough to taste.)

“It’s the full moon,” Steve said when it became apparent that Tony wasn’t going to obey him. (He seemed noticeably irritated by that too, just beneath his absolute calm, just completely irritated to be disobeyed.) “I can help.”

The full moon probably wasn’t to blame for Tony losing his mind, or for how he’d adopted the part time hobby of stalking a man. It wasn’t to blame for his present condition, but he was willing to agree and join whatever cult Steve was part of if ‘helping’ meant ‘fucking you out of your misery’. Tony started the car so he could roll the window down a finger width. “How?” 

“How?” Steve repeated. His irritation turned to concern that made his masculine features soften into something like a six week old puppy’s tiny face. He didn’t duck low but crouch so he was staring in through the car window properly. His nostrils were sucking in the smell of the air they were almost sharing. “Don’t you know?” he asked. And like it couldn’t possibly be true. “You don’t. What is your name?” 

“Don’t have one,” Tony said.

The irritation made Steve’s face harden again. He was _steamed_ with annoyance. This was a man who had never been asked to repeat himself, and here he was in this ridiculous situation. Here he was having to employ patience, resting his fingertips on Tony’s car to steady himself as he said (again), “I can help. You would need to get out of the car.”

“No, I’m good.”

“Get out of the car,” Steve repeated, but with more force. 

Tony shook his head, “I said no. No means no, buddy.”

Steve’s jaw clenched and then he stood up again. He leaned against the top of the car so his face couldn’t be seen, but Tony was sure it must have been a beautiful sight. When he stepped back again, he was working on fairness, motioning behind him toward the forest lurking in the distance. “Next full moon, you meet me there.” He turned enough that Tony could see something like a direction.

“Yeah,” Tony said as he put the car in reverse, “I wouldn’t count on it. Thank you, I’m sorry. Let’s never meet again.”

Steve looked at him with pity then. He slid his hands into his pockets and stepped farther from the car so Tony could make his escape.

#  STEVE 

Steve had forgotten he’d agreed to meet Bucky when he returned from the town. They had agreed to go for a long run to shake off the energy from the full moon. There had been talk of a proper hunt, maybe some splashing in a mountain stream. They would end up sleeping wherever they landed. 

(Anything that took Steve farther away from the alpha and his constant requests.)

“No paint?” Bucky asked when Steve arrived still wearing khakis with no art supplies to speak of. “No pencils? Why are you wearing pants?”

Steve was wearing pants because he’d walked all the way back to his den as a man and he hadn’t even noticed. It must have taken hours and yet he remembered none of the journey except the end. “He wouldn’t get out of the car!” Steve shouted.

“Who?” Bucky asked.

“The man,” Steve said.

It wasn’t that Steve had meant to make life difficult for Bucky. He very frequently tried his _best_ to do the things that Bucky asked him to do (for the good of the pack). It was just that when Steve didn’t listen (and he rarely did) it always seemed to stress Bucky more than it did anyone else. So, yes, perhaps Steve had tried discovering humanity through a different town once, and perhaps he had bodily dragged a man two and half blocks because the man had been infuriating and deserved it. That didn’t mean that every man Steve met deserved it, or that he necessarily was going to drag anyone again. But Bucky was built for worst case scenarios so his face went soft and his voice loosened up and he was very confidential and forgiving when his hand landed on Steve’s shoulder and he said, “Steve,” in the way only Bucky could. “We talked about it, man. Humans don’t think the same way.”

“No,” Steve said, “he wasn’t a human--he was a human but he wasn’t--he _isn’t_ going to be one for much longer. He’s a new wolf, he hasn’t turned yet. He doesn’t have a pack, he doesn’t even know he’s turning.”

Bucky assessed this information. He lingered in the closeness. And when he’d decided that it was probably accurate, he stepped away again. “So leave him alone. Someone will take him in when he turns.”

“He’s been coming to the town to look for me.”

“You haven’t mentioned.”

“I haven’t noticed.”

“Then how do you know he’s been looking for you?” Bucky asked.

Setting aside the art store smelling like a calling card. Setting aside the stink of arousal that emanated from the man like thick soup. Setting aside the guilty way the man refused to look at him. There was the old person at the art store that had said it outright. “Several reasons,” Steve said. “He’s been looking for me, that means something.” Steve didn’t know what it meant, but he knew it wasn’t meaningless. “He needs help.”

“But he wouldn’t get out of the car?”

“He didn’t listen to me!” Steve shouted. Everyone listened to him. (Well, Bucky didn’t because Bucky was generally the one telling Steve to do things, like wear shoes and brush his teeth and never eat in people places. Bucky had taught him the system of money and how to smile without showing too many teeth. And Natasha didn’t but she didn’t listen to anyone. And sometimes Sam didn’t, but Sam was new to the territory, a transplant from the one of the city packs, and they weren’t as old fashioned as the territory wolves. But everyone _else_ listened to him.) “He just left.”

“He left?”

“Yes.”

“You let a new wolf, on the verge of turning, that’s been stalking you, leave?”

“I didn’t _let_ him. I told him not to and he left anyway. I told him to come back and I’d help him but he probably won’t do that either. He didn’t listen to me.”

Bucky was frowning at him. “Steve,” was the impatient sort that happened when Bucky found coupons in his hiding places after he’d been caught walking shirtless in the snow by people again. “ _Steve_ , people aren’t wolves. They aren’t going to listen to you because you stand up really straight and tell them to. You have to--” Bucky struggled to figure out the word he wanted, “try harder. You have to think like a person.”

“He wanted to come,” in more than one definition of a word, “he just did not.”

“If he comes back, you have to remember that he’s a person. People aren’t wolves. People don’t know wolves are real. You have to convince him that you can help him, and that he wants you to.”

It shouldn’t have been difficult at all. The man should have followed him. The man wanted to follow him. His smell was all but broadcasting his very potent desire to follow him. It was just that, for no reason at all, the man hadn’t followed him. “Fine,” Steve said.

“Fine,” Bucky said. He stood there awkwardly, looking out of place and unnatural in the den, and then motioned toward the entrance, “are we still running?”

Yes. Yes they were.

#  TONY 

The three hour traffic jam coming back from New Rutberry had not done a single thing to deter the nearly unbearable lust. Rather than drawing his attention away from how pleased and hopeful his dick had been to be so close to Steve, and how they (Tony and his penis had developed separate needs and wants and therefore should not be considered the same entity) could have just followed him. His aching dick had sat in traffic and expressed itself with lusty morse code, telling him all about how he could have just gotten fucked in a forest. No amount of Tony’s caution, or the feeling that he was equally likely to end up murdered by a forest cult, had diminished his dick’s hostile assurances. Tony had sat in traffic trying (in vain) to think about _anything_ except fucking but no matter how he tried to wrap his brain around a current project, he was jerking off the gear shift, getting caught up in _filthy_ daydreams. 

He may or he may not have asked his GPS to take him back to New Rutberry and cancelled the command at least three times. It all depended on a man’s perception of who was in charge of the situation, Tony’s upstairs or downstairs brain. 

By the time he dragged his tired ass through his front door, he had reached the point of helpless horniness that could only be endured and not enjoyed. Jerking off in the half bath off to the side of the kitchen was certainly not his idea of a good time, but it relieved at _least_ a small, small part of the tension that was making his life unbearable. 

He washed his hands and took a moment to stare at himself in the mirror. It was important for a man to really take stock in his life, and his choices, and the things that happened to him. Tony was successful, incredibly rich, and generally well-liked. He was handsome. He was a genius. He was stalking a forest cult member for reasons he couldn’t identify, and jerking off in bathrooms just so he could walk upright for a few minutes.

“What the fuck,” he asked his reflection. His reflection, being nothing but a mirror of his own face, had no answers either. It just showed him as he was, a grown man in need of a good shave and a good haircut. A vain man might have thought the fluffy overgrowth of his hair made him look younger, a vainer man might have been annoyed at how his perfectly clipped facial hair had gone off and ruined itself in a matter of hours, but Tony was tired.

And horny.

And he didn’t have time to be vain or vainer. 

He had only enough time to catch his breath before his phone was ringing again. He had only enough time to glance at the screen (and ask himself if he really, really wanted to answer it) before his front door was opening like it had never been closed. Pepper’s unsmiling face on his phone screen went dark as she came to the realization that he wouldn’t answer, but Rhodey’s unsmiling face was perfectly present in his kitchen squinting at him through the open bathroom door. 

“I think that’s breaking and entering,” Tony said.

“I didn’t break,” Rhodey said. He didn’t have to since he had a key. And who would really accuse such a decorated member of the armed forces of crimes anyway? “I only entered.”

“Trespassing,” Tony said instead. He folded his hand towel back over its bar and flipped the light switch back off. If the bathroom smelled like the lingering desperation of a man that had lost his fucking mind, well, that was the problem for whoever decided to invite themselves over. “Is there a reason you’re not breaking into my home right now? Shouldn’t you be off protecting America’s freedom?”

“Weak,” Rhodey countered. He definitely smelled the sweat and maybe he smelled the semen, but he was just staring at Tony’s face like he didn’t understand what he was seeing. “When’s the last time you shaved?”

“Seven o’clock?”

“Two days ago?”

“This morning.” Tony pulled open his fridge and found nothing that seemed as appetizing as not eating anything. (Not anything he wanted as much as he wanted a fresh change of a clothes, a full tank of a gas and a clear road all the way back to New Rutberry.) “Is this why you came? To judge my grooming habits.”

“It’s hard to judge them when you don’t appear to have any.” Rhodey couldn’t even maintain the same level of sarcastic not conversation that their friendship relied on so heavily. No, he broke under the strain of real concern, “just tell me, please _tell me_ you weren’t back in that stupid town--what’s it called? New Nutberry?” (No. But that would have been funny in a different way.) “Please tell me that you aren’t still stalking that man. What was his name? Pete? Steve? Something with ees.”

“See now, I can feel you judging me.”

“Tony,” Rhodey said with _immense_ importance. He was a guy who wasn’t known for being too touchy. He was a military man, a career man, the sort of fellow that was always there for you, the one that would hug you if you were dying and would slap your arm if it was necessary. But he wasn’t the sort of man to use touch with any sort of casual indifference, he wasn’t known to grab another man by both his shoulders. He wasn’t known to grip Tony’s upper arms with all ten of his fingers and to squeeze like he wished he was wringing his neck. “This just isn’t like you. Things have gotten really weird--we’re all worried, Tony. All of us. Pepper, Me, Happy, Coulson. We’re all _very worried_.”

“Who’s Coulson?”

“First it was staying up all night, and then it was that thing with the raw steaks.”

“They were rare, they were not raw. _Rare_ is a flavor choice and by the way,” Tony didn’t try to get his freedom because he’d already proven that freedom led him back to good ol’ New Rutberry. “You didn’t answer the question. Who is Coulson?”

“You stopped cutting your hair, your beard is a mess.”

“I cut my hair all the time.”

“Pepper said she found you sitting on the roof? The _roof_ at two in the morning.”

“I think the question we need to be asking ourselves is why Pepper was at my house at two o’clock in the morning. That’s not normal.”

Rhodey’s hands tightened, his point was coming to a crystal point and he needed Tony’s full attention. “I watched you rub up against all the furniture in your office, Tony. I watched you stare down the kid that delivers the mail in the office when he tried to get near your door. You-- You just aren’t yourself.”

“Ok, I hear what you’re saying, and I get it. But who is Coulson?”

“He works with Pepper, the point is that you don’t have enough friends to be worried about you so we had to recruit some. _Tony_ , things are getting really weird, weird even for you.”

Rhodey had a point. Things were getting really weird, because Tony wasn’t even trying to think of a way to smooth this whole thing over. He was calculating exactly what he was going to have to say to get Rhodey to _leave_ because it would take him at least an hour to get back to New Rutberry and Steve _had_ invited him this time. It wasn’t stalking when the nice cult member asked you back. 

“I think you’re overstating things,” Tony said.

“I think I’m not leaving. You’re not yourself.”

Well, that was inconvenient but Tony was a genius and he wasn’t going to let a little thing like a intelligent, sound-minded, well-meaning best friend stop him. He knew all the exits and even if he didn’t, it felt like his dick (now that it had its own separate consciousness) could figure it out without him. “Well, you do what you’ve got to do, platypus.”

#  STEVE 

Steve enjoyed running. He very much enjoyed the thrill of the wind passing through his fur. He enjoyed the thrill of unlimited freedom. He could spend the whole of his life running at full speed from one end of the territory to the other. He didn’t mind the sticks and brambles and rocks of the forest in his paws, he didn’t mind the things that got stuck in his fur. He didn’t mind the necessity of raw meat and occasional wound that a good hunt left behind.

The old alpha vying for retirement liked to say that Steve’s love of the greater wilderness was proof that he was _meant_ to be their future Alpha. Steve’s endurance, his strength, his complete indifference to pain and fatigue, all those things were traits that needed to be passed on. With as many women as showed up and asked. It was for the good of the pack. The good of their way of life. 

The wolves needed a return of wanderlust and brute strength, the old alpha said.

(It was just, beneath the wealth of muscle, Steve was still a stick-thin runt with a penchant for making art and watching the moon slowly drift up in the sky. He had a taste for the simple, and beautiful.)

The only thing that Steve didn’t enjoy about running, about being a wolf every moment, was how limited his scope of communication was. Sometimes that was better; sometimes all you needed to say was ‘turn left’ and ‘eat this rabbit’ and sometimes you needed a people face to use people words because you were stuck on people ideas.

Not all people ideas had wolf words, and Steve’s internal translator was lazy. He couldn’t concentrate on the silvery glory of the rising moon. He wasn’t moved by the surge of energy and pure, primal, animal instinct. No, he sat on his ass on a rock, looking at the dirt, and not the moon. There had been others that had come here to see the moon. Plenty of others that had taken the opportunity to enjoy the freedom of mating wherever the urge overtook them. There were little groups and pairs of wolves around him, smelling up the clear air with the stink of sex.

And there was Bucky, dragging himself away from a good time to change back into a man, to look at Steve’s naked person skin with disdain and regret. “What is it?” Bucky asked, “you’re getting looks. I know you don’t want to join in but you can’t just sit up here looking like that.” He motioned until Steve moved enough that there was space for two of them.

“The man,” Steve said, “he looked just like a man. He seemed to be like us,” (Bucky was looking at him as attentive as any wolf who had walked away from a promising future fuck could), “but he smelled--he smelled like them.” Steve motioned at all the flirty lady wolves inviting whatever man was worthy of trying. He meant the smell of their arousal fanned around by the swish of their tails and--

And--

Bucky was just staring at him. He was just staring with his lips parted and his hand halfway to his covering his face.

“But he was _man_. I think. He couldn’t have been. He was _inviting_ me.”

Bucky’s hand landed on his face, spread over his mouth as his eyes took on that glint of desperation usually reserved for their third conversation about not eating people animals. (Yes, chickens were good and cats were fun to chase but we SHOULD NOT.) “Steve,” Bucky said very quietly, “have you,” he paused, eyes squinted and his free hand curling up into a fist, “have you ever thought about why you don’t want to be alpha?”

“I am an alpha.” Wolves said it all the time. _Now there’s an alpha._ And _I’d make him my alpha anyday._ And, _he could boss me around all day_.

Both of Bucky’s hands were half-extended, almost like he was going to grab Steve by the neck. “No,” he whispered, “I mean the pack alpha.”

“Oh,” Steve said, “it’s a lot of responsibility and I’m already in the guard.” The guard was more fun than being the alpha anyway. The guard protected the territory from rogue wolves and various threats. The alpha sat around and made _choices_ and settled disputes and mated with all the females that asked.

Bucky was out of words. It happened sometimes with him. He just ran out of ways to say things.

“I’m not asking about me. I’m asking about the man.”

“Steve,” Bucky said again. This time his hand did rest on Steve’s arm, he slid a little closer and turned so they were facing one another more privately. In such a close space, with no clothes on, it was impossible not to take note of how (despite his apparent frustration with Steve) Bucky was half-hard just from the growing smell of available and interested ladies waiting down the hillside. “Have you _ever_ wanted to mate with a woman?”

Steve couldn’t really remember wanting to mate with anyone. He certainly had never been invited over for party games and sex like the other wolves in his age group. Even Bucky who was his closest friend had never extended an invitation. They played games, and went on runs, and spent time bathing in moonlight but-- “Who else could I mate with? I’m just waiting for the right one!”

“Right,” Bucky reassured him, right.

“I can,” Steve said, “I can definitely mate if I wanted.”

“Of course you can,” Bucky said. “Look, but what if--and I’m not saying it has to be true--but what _if_ you wanted to mate with this guy.”

“No. He wants me.”

Bucky leaned back, he sighed and looked longingly down the hill. It was clear (from his growing distraction) that he would rather be there than here. “Maybe he’s an omega,” Bucky said in a way that sounded suspiciously made up. “I heard that sometimes new wolves imprint on the first alpha they see, and if that new wolf is a man sometimes you get an omega. So he’s a man as a person but as a wolf he wants you.”

“He turns into a woman?”

Bucky wasn’t listening anymore. “No,” wasn’t concerned about the important problem they were discussing, “No, he’s always a man. He just--he would just be your mate. An omega, an omega to compliment your alpha.” That sounded a great deal like People Thoughts, the sort of thing that left wolves rolling their eyes and finding convenient reasons to leave the conversation. Steve might have said as much, he might have asked what that was even supposed to mean, and if they had ever known another omega, but Bucky was slapping him on the arm as he got to his feet. “Don’t worry, Steve. It’ll work out.”


End file.
